Claudia von Boeselager [00:00:00]:
My guest today is PJ Sorbo, a biochemistry expert, serial entrepreneur and brain health advocate who's shaping the future of nutritional science and longevity. He's the co founder and president of Gomix Technology HopBox together with Dr. Amy Killen, which are longevity supplements for women, which I love. And he's on the board of Wavi Medical, a cutting edge company focused on brain health, regenerative wellness and longevity, which we'll be digging into today. With a background in cellular and molecular biology, PJ merges science, business and biohacking to push the boundaries of human optimization. He's also built and sold multiple business the health space, helped thousands optimize their wellness and is now leading the charge to make brain health assessments a routine part of preventative medicine.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:01:40]:
As many of you will know, my mother is suffering now with late stage dementia, so brain health is an area that is very close to my heart. Today we'll dive into the science of brain aging, cognitive performance and the cutting edge tech that could help us stay mentally sharp for life. Please enjoy. Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. Pj. It's such a pleasure to have you with us today.

PJ Sorbo [00:02:03]:
Thank you for having me.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:02:05]:
Pj we were just talking offline and so for the benefit of my audience, because you do so many things, could you give a brief introduction to yourself and all the incredible things that you're doing?

PJ Sorbo [00:02:18]:
Yes, I can. Let's see, where do I start? PJ Sorbo, I would classify myself as a serial entrepreneur, which I hate that definition at its core, but it really is a true description. The way that I describe it to people most is that I am in the health and wellness industry. So I own a portfolio of supplement companies all centered around longevity and or supplementation that is where most of my career backed started. But then I also do a number of things in longevity and or anti aging and industry particularly I've been involved with WABI Medical for the last six years and from that I've started making various strategic investments into other data analysis companies, longevity clinic companies, et cetera. So I have some passion projects out there on the outer rim of the entrepreneurship as well. But those are kind of the main time contributors to my life currently. And a father.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:03:19]:
And a father, very important. Exactly. Yes. Can't forget about that. I'm excited today for us taking a bit of a deep dive into brain health and aging. We might get distracted and talk about a few other things, but we'll try to stay focused and on point with that. Where did your passion and interest in brain health and aging start from? Where did that stem from?

PJ Sorbo [00:03:41]:
Oh, that's a great question. Actually I have. I'm going to go really far back actually. You'll laugh at this. So when a. I was a terrible student, just I was, I was the kid that had a star chart all the way up until like middle school, right?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:03:58]:
Like I'm the cool kid that got the Star Trek, I was the cool.

PJ Sorbo [00:04:01]:
Kid that got stars and it was wonderful. So my parents really were trying to figure out why I just was not great at school. All the way through elementary school I ended up going into this gift and talented program. I took this IQ test and the ACT and all these things and got into this gifted and talented program. And ultimately what I had found or what they found is that I was bored as all get out I'm like why am I applying myself to school? This is. I just don't understand the purpose. So I go through that help my academic career. And then when I got into middle school, part of the gifted and talented program is I got to choose a little bit of my curriculum.

PJ Sorbo [00:04:40]:
So I took a biotech class and it was like just all general overview biotech and one of the areas we had to write a dissertation paper and one of the areas that we had had is we had a stem cell researcher come in and speak to the class and we're sitting there and one of the problems and that still exists is that stem cells are really hard to like is A they're hard to stay keep pluripotent or multiple potent in the body and B we can inject 10 million stem cells. We don't really have control over the type of tissues that those are binding to or where they're going. We hope that they're Healing the areas that we're, you know, but we don't really have a great way of measuring or controlling that. And so that is what I wrote my first dissertation on with seventh grade, because I was like, oh, I think that what we should probably do is find some way where, like signaling proteins or glycans or sugar molecules on the outside of, you know, the proteins or the stem cells, the tissues that's damaged, Is there a way that we could actually track it? Stem cell? So I wrote that huge passion, and it was like, I just. I lit up about it. I go through the next couple years, and I was a competitive snowboarder, and I think I had, let's call it 10 + concussions. And my last concussion was by far my most severe. And I was up at a resort called Winter park, and I went off a jump, came down backwards, hit my head once, bounced off the nickel knuckle, hit my head a second time, and the helmet ends up cracking down the back of it.

PJ Sorbo [00:06:20]:
And I had quite a few cognitive issues, you could say. Woke up, you know, a number of hours later, couldn't remember things, couldn't remember who I was, all of that kind of stuff. And so as I'm going through life and I get through entrepreneurship and I go up to college, I wanted to be a doctor, neurologist, orthopedic surgeon, plastic surgeon. Still fascinated with the human body. I was getting out of my first business, which was a series of retail stores. And I'm sitting there and I had made a little bit of capital from selling one of our companies. And I just had this chronic brain fog. Like, just endless.

PJ Sorbo [00:07:02]:
A, endless lack of sleep, B, just not feeling myself. I was somebody that grew up with a photographic memory where I could read a textbook. And I have it in my brain, right. Great problem to have. And when you don't feel that way anymore, yeah, it feels like something is missing. It feels like something is off. Right? And so I had a life mentor of mine basically call me and be like, dude, you need to go get a Wabi scan. Like, what the hell is Wavi? What.

PJ Sorbo [00:07:29]:
What is this thing you're talking about? So I go get a Wabi scan. They're looking to kind of grow. This was early, early Wabi days. And I. I see the technology and I'm like, this will change medicine. This is really cool. You can literally do a full comprehensive brain scan in less than four minutes. With setup, it's 10.

PJ Sorbo [00:07:49]:
I. I thought I was going to be sitting in a hospital. I thought I was going to Be doing all this. On top of that, I had lost my grandfather very early onset to type 2 frontal dementia. And knowing what I know now, it obviously makes a lot more sense. And understanding the kind of symptomology and just, even the, even the onset of his disease, it makes a ton of sense knowing the contributing factors that you know about nowadays, right. And all the research that we're doing. But after getting involved with that, it just was kind of this marriage between my love of medicine, my love of human optimization.

PJ Sorbo [00:08:29]:
I'm going to caveat really quick. I got really addicted to bodybuilding because of my love of the human body and performance. And I was like, I believe that bodybuilders were the first biohackers. Like, no if, ands or buts. It's fun because when you're on all these longevity forms and you see people talking about peptides or growth hormone or anything, insulin or whatever else, I'm like, we've been doing that 20 years, people.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:08:54]:
This ain't new. This ain't new.

PJ Sorbo [00:08:56]:
Welcome to the world. And I still think some of the best research and science that's been out there is the bro science quote, unquote. Because it was just a whole bunch of us that were like, excuse my language, but it, I'll try it. Like, who knows? Um, so anyways, so that kind of all compounded, Wabi was looking to grow and then just through, you know, a different network of individuals, Wabi really provided a foundation to kind of continue to grow into this longevity space. And it's just been a blast.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:09:31]:
Oh, amazing. Well, thank you for sharing your story. And so let's have a deep dive into that as well. And I think for people listening, first of all, maybe even to start with, like, why is it so important to have a brain scan, like, to have those assessments. Assessments done, I believe, you know, Wavi, maybe you can talk about what the actual assessment is and that it's only four minutes. Because I think a lot of people think of like, you know, the full on EEGs with all the like cables coming off something out of like a future futuristic film. So why is it important to do that? And I'm sure everyone has experienced some sort of head bump, head trauma, head concussion, potentially even as well at some point and even more reason to, you know, really pay attention to this. So can you walk us through that?

PJ Sorbo [00:10:14]:
Yeah, let me. I'm going to start at the beginning. Number one, the reason that Wabi was invented was that there's a core fundamental issue in measuring the brain. So on On a genuine passion scale, I believe everyone in the world should have a WABI brain scan year over year over year over year before Wabi or other technologies that are similar, which there's not a whole bunch, but there are, there are more evolving technologies in this landscape. Right. If you wanted to go get a comprehensive brain scan every single year, what were your options? Mri, which is really just an anatomical physical representation. It's not a whole bunch of data. Also, good luck getting scripted for one with your insurance to just do it on a year over year basis.

PJ Sorbo [00:10:59]:
Right?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:10:59]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:11:00]:
SPECT scan. Awesome. Can be cool. Does it really show us that much information? And obviously Dr. Amen's doing a ton of research with this, but Also, who has $5,000 to spend every year? Plus the radioactive dye, you know, that we have to use, I don't know if that's really something that I would want to do every six months to a year, nor do I have. Does Most population have 5 to $10,000 to do it? You have PET scans, we have fmris. Right. But none of this is overly accessible, nor is it affordable.

PJ Sorbo [00:11:33]:
Right. You also have EEGs. Again, accessible, not affordable, not something that's comprehensively done. So the true need for WABI came from the fact that like we measure every other part of our body other than the one thing that controls all of it. Right. And. And it was primarily due to a lack of accessibility and affordability. Yeah, that was the initial need.

PJ Sorbo [00:11:56]:
Right. So Wabi is an EEG device at its core. We are fully FDA cleared Class 2 medical device as an EEG. But what Wabi really specializes in is something called an auditory evoke potential. And there's a clear distinction between the two. We use the EEG to measure an auditory evoke potential. Right. When you're watching something like Grey's Anatomy.

PJ Sorbo [00:12:22]:
Right. And they're doing a brain scan on somebody that potentially is either in a coma or it's been in a traumatic incident. Right. They're looking at an eeg, but they're also normally looking at something called that evoke potential. Because what it's telling us is, it's actually telling us if your brain is still processing sensory information, that is what that representation is. It's called P300. And it's an unbelievably a reliable and b super efficient biomarker for just overall cognitive function. How much energy does your brain have to process information with as well as how quickly does that signal actually happen? Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:12:59]:
And those two numbers together make up what we call a P300 wave. And none of this is new. It's not like this is something that Wabi has miraculously discovered. Both of these markers have been around, you know, EEG has been almost 100 years and auditory vote potentials have been 60, probably 50, 60 years. I mean, we're talking 1960s, 1970s. Right.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:13:22]:
But is it mainstream? I mean this.

PJ Sorbo [00:13:24]:
It's still not mainstream. I think it's because of a lack of ability to measure it. Right.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:13:29]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:13:29]:
There has never been an overly accessible platform to do it. And that's truly what Wabi wanted to change. And that's what I believe we have done, is I can now take a full comprehensive brain scan. And Claudia comes into the clinic and she wants to do her year over year wellness assessment. It will take less than 12 minutes. The actual scan is only four minutes. It's extremely quick, it's extremely reliable. It's an unbelievable baseline marker for or biomarker for the brain.

PJ Sorbo [00:13:58]:
Just like we're tracking blood pressure or cardiovascular health or our blood panels, we can now do a true baseline biomarker on your brain, how well it's functioning. And now I can compare subsequent scans against it. I can do year over year wellness assessments. I can do pre post protocol, I can do pre post injury and things like concussion and return to play protocols. I can do post injury rehabilitation. Right. So when I was going through my brain recovery kind of area, I would love to make this blanket statement that hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers are unbelievable for every single person. Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:14:35]:
And I think that could be true. But when we're talking about the brain specifically Wabi, at its core is in a very dumbed down, layman version or just street talk. It is a representation of the mitochondrial support for your cortex. Right. And so anything that improves or impairs the mitochondrial support for your brain, we will see either fluctuations in that P300 voltage. Right. The energy that your brain is able to donate. And so when you have a traumatic brain injury or a concussion, the best concussion or best definition for a concussion that I've ever heard is a metabolic crisis of the cerebral cortex.

PJ Sorbo [00:15:18]:
And when you break that down, metabolic, referring to mitochondrial support crisis, lack thereof, of the cerebral cortex of your brain, we see about a 40% drop on average post concussion in P300. Right. And the unique part about this is 40%. Yeah. Oh, minimum. Like that's the baseline. Right. And there's a true lack of mitochondrial support for the brain.

PJ Sorbo [00:15:45]:
Right. Now that could be due to chronic inflammatory complex. We could go down the rabbit hole of concussions. For the next two hours we won't do that. But kind of my point is that there's a number of things that can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction. Right. You can have a profusion problem, you can have a methylation problem, you can have a blood flow problem, you could have a chronic inflammatory complex leading to both of those things. Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:16:09]:
So in my case, I saw unbelievable results with hyperbarics.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:16:13]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:16:15]:
Which then I could infer that I probably had some sort of a perfusion issue. Right. Then, leading to, you know, lack of mitochondrial support for the brain. And then we have to get into the lymphatic drainage, the chronic inflammatory complex. But like in, in its simplicity, having a baseline objective, true objective marker that I can't fake, I can't go in this morning and say I'm gonna think 30% faster or I'm gonna donate 30 more energy to my brain. Can't. Like it is what it is at that point, right?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:16:49]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:16:49]:
And so I have a true baseline objective marker that's telling me what is working or what's not working and put whatever therapy you want in there. It could be red light, it could be photobiomodulation, it could be high powered laser, it could be lifestyle medication, it.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:17:06]:
Could be hbot, anything.

PJ Sorbo [00:17:08]:
The true power that I believe that WABI is kind of bringing to not just the longevity side of things, but also just medicine as a whole, is the personalization of medicine specifically for the brain and the accessibility of really, truly building out archetypes and brain data that allows us to get way more information than we've ever had on things that.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:17:34]:
Affect the brain and get granular and personalized as well. Because one person will respond to each part in a certain way, somebody else will respond to red light in another way. So there's not this one size fits all. And everyone's trauma, concussion, et cetera might also be a bit different too. So that's what's really exciting with where we are, I believe, with personalized medicine and what we can do with it. For people listening pj, can you break down like, what exactly does this four minute assessment look like? And then how frequently should or could, could. Can people have that assessment if they want to test certain protocols?

PJ Sorbo [00:18:10]:
Yeah, great question, actually. So number one, four minute scan, super quick. Right. It is a clinical eeg. Right. So we have our patented headset, put the sensors in, it's a saline based sensor. You're not drowning your head in EEG gel. And for anyone that's had a traditional EEG done, I'm so Sorry.

PJ Sorbo [00:18:31]:
Because it's awful. Right. This is coming from someone that's had multiple. Yeah. And that's really the thing that Wabi does change is it makes it so easy to do a true brain scan. Right. With setup we'll get it all set up and then what we're doing is. All we're doing is a four minute scan where you're listening to a series of basically high pitched tones.

PJ Sorbo [00:18:50]:
You don't have to do anything. It is a conscious, subconscious reaction that's happening in the brain. So what happens is I snap my fingers. Your brain and my brain process that at a certain speed and a certain voltage. Voltage. So it comes in through your ear, it travels to your thalamus, and once it gets to your thalamus, it travels to the different parts of your cortex and that is a P300 wave. And that's. We're just tracking that through the entire brain.

PJ Sorbo [00:19:16]:
You cannot control this. Right. You could sit there for the four minutes, eyes closed, and we're going to get all of the data. Doesn't matter if you do anything or not. Right. I think that the best use case for that, me personally, is at the very minimum, everyone should have a year over year brain scan, no questions asked. Right. And the whole purpose behind that is that we track so many different things.

PJ Sorbo [00:19:44]:
I actually think that we're at a point of data fatigue when it gets into longevity and biohacking. But I won't go into that because there's a way.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:19:51]:
AI can be very useful, by the way, I think. But anyway, yeah, I agree with you.

PJ Sorbo [00:19:55]:
Because right now, like, I mean, I wear certain things, but like, if you want to track something, you can track it.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:20:01]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:20:02]:
There's all of it. Right. And at what point is it meaningful data? We won't get into that conversation, but at the very minimum, let's have a year over year brain scan. Here's the reality of it. You do not catch dementia, you do not catch Alzheimer's, you do not catch Parkinson's, you do not catch any one of these neurodegenerative diseases or als as well.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:20:24]:
Yeah, yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:20:25]:
They develop over a series of years. Yeah, right.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:20:30]:
Typically 20.

PJ Sorbo [00:20:31]:
Yeah. The lifestyle choices you make in your 20s. I just turned 31, so the lifestyle choices. Thank you. Directly impact my 30s, my 40s, my 50s. Right. If all of a sudden this is the use case that I use on a regular basis, Claudia. If you come in every single year and then all of a sudden you come in next year for your brain scan and I see a 30% drop in your brain performance.

PJ Sorbo [00:20:58]:
You and I can sit down and we can have a conversation. We can say what the hell is going on?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:21:02]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:21:03]:
Why are we see what is correlating to this? And I guarantee you that you will find something that's correlated. You gained some weight, your blood pressure is off. Your metabolic health, as far as your cardiovascular health is off. Inflammatory conflicts, trauma of some sort, whether physical or emotional. Right. And the thing that we've learned is that emotional trauma can be stored in the body substantially and can lead to physiological issues.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:21:30]:
And that's so important for people to understand too. It's not just, oh, I wasn't feeling happy. No. This actually affects your health and your.

PJ Sorbo [00:21:36]:
It's a real physiological thing. I mean like ptsd, however you choose to define that creates physiological issues in the brain. Right. And the body. So again, brain is super powerful. Really cool thing. Also somewhat scary. We should probably take care of it.

PJ Sorbo [00:21:54]:
Yep. So I can sit down. I can say, claudia, what's going on right now? What. Why are we seeing this? Right. And we can intervene at year one instead of those same lifestyle behaviors continuing for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. That's where we start to see neurodegeneration happen, is the chronic issues that develop that go unnoticed. The problem right now is that we only scan the brain when there's already an issue. I'm already forgetting my keys.

PJ Sorbo [00:22:25]:
There's already been subacute trauma. There's already been some sort of issue. There is no preventative module behind it. To get a little more specific. Yeah, that's single use case. Use case B or C or D. We are the. I don't know if I should say this.

PJ Sorbo [00:22:42]:
We are one of the best concussion devices ever developed because you can't fake it. I can do a pre scan for every professional athlete or every collegiate athlete or every kid that's on a football field or soccer or whatever. And if there is a concussion, I can know exactly how the brain was affected, the exact area of the brain was affected. Right. And then we can monitor the child or the athlete's recovery and they don't go back to play until their brain has returned to baseline protocol. The problem is we did a six year concussion study with C Boulder and which was phenomenal. The problem right now is a double blind. So huge props to CU for obviously putting doing this study.

PJ Sorbo [00:23:30]:
The problem is that over 40% of the time the athlete is cleared to go back to play before the brain has recovered back to baseline voltage. And it's because we're Using subjective markers. If you really want to go down that rabbit hole, feel free to do research on the impact test and how it's being gamified and how it's taught. I mean, I was taught as a kid that if I do, you know, if I do, if I act slow on my first baseline impact test, I can go back to play faster. Right. Because we don't care about it. We don't care about the longevity.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:01]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:24:01]:
When we're 15, we're like, the brain.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:04]:
Yeah. Oh, I'll be fine. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:24:07]:
I bounce off things still at this point. Well, when you hit 30, you don't bounce quite as well. It's weird how that happens.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:12]:
Yeah. And then you hit 40 and 50, and then you're like, what happened?

PJ Sorbo [00:24:16]:
Love this. But I. So there's concussions, there's traumatic brain injuries.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:22]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:24:22]:
There's just interventionally. How do we personalize medicine? And if you want to find something that's working for your brain, you have to have a scale. And I think that's what WABI provides, is a personalized scale for cognition. So every longevity center, in my opinion, should probably have some sort of device like this concierge medicine. I'd love to get into primary care eventually, but it just. There has to be some passion there. It's a little different. It's very affordable.

PJ Sorbo [00:24:55]:
But I really, truly believe it's what eventually allows us to change the personalization of medicine, especially for. For brain care.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:25:02]:
Yeah. No, I think it's so fundamental, is establishing that baseline, as you're saying as well. Obviously, the sooner the better, so that, you know, ideally, when you're still in a peak state and if something happens, but keeping an eye on that. So for people listening pj, they might be like, okay, well, what can I actually do? You know, can I really repair things? Can I really make it better? Do I? Or is it better just not to know? So obviously you were able to repair your brain as well. What are some of the different modalities that people listening and if they were to go and do the scan, could do to implement to maintain a peak performance in terms of brain health state.

PJ Sorbo [00:25:41]:
Where do I want to start with this one? We are a. Here's the cool part about being involved with wabi. Number one, neuroplasticity is real. No if, ands or buts. The things that I have seen. Right. Are unbelievable. I tell this story because it's what sold me on wabi.

PJ Sorbo [00:26:02]:
Actually, when I first got involved with wabi, there's a center out here in Denver, Colorado, where I live, that used to be called the Neuro Laser foundation. And they specialize in, like, very, very advanced traumatic brain injury cases. They have their proprietary method of doing, you know, rehab, et cetera. Some of that's cold laser, some of that's photobiomodulation. They use SPECT scans, they use wabi. They overlay everything. Right. And they're truly, truly looking at impaired blood flow patterns.

PJ Sorbo [00:26:33]:
They're looking at impaired functionality of the cortex. They're figuring out where they're targeting that treatment. I came into their office to do a baseline brain scan and this was seriously like my first or second week thinking about, you know, joining the team of Wabi. And there's a patient there that was in a 120 mile an hour. She was the passenger, she survived, the driver did not her. Their skulls hit and so tons of brain damage across the left hand side of her brain. So I do a water scan. The whole left hand side of her brain is like no voltage zeros, right? Absolutely.

PJ Sorbo [00:27:10]:
Almost no cognitive functionality. For me to do the scan on her was very difficult in the sense that there was a lot of emotional dysregulation. She struggled with speech, she struggled with just like just becoming very overwhelmed very quickly. Right. And this is where I go into the emotional side of things. Emotional trauma has physical manifestations, Right. When you have a substantial lack of brain power, for lack of a better term due to a traumatic manager, you have less energy to donate towards emotional stimulus.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:27:44]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:27:45]:
And so it's not emotional and physical, it's just overall energy. We only have so much that we produce. Right. So I do the brain scan and then it's quite an expensive program, but it, they've seen very phenomenal results. And so I, they go through treatment for an entire week and I come back and I do another brain scan. And in all of the areas that they had been targeting, I saw a 30 to 60% increase.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:28:12]:
In one week.

PJ Sorbo [00:28:13]:
In one week.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:28:14]:
Wow.

PJ Sorbo [00:28:15]:
She's. We're in the room alone because having the family, the doctors in there was just emotionally overloading. Right. So I get her through the scan and I'm going through the initial data with her up front and I just see tears coming down her, like her face. Family comes in, she's crying, they're like, oh, is everything okay? I'm like, yeah, everything's great. We're seeing a ton of progress, quite frankly. I'm flabbergasted and the whole family's in tears. And I just asked the question, I was like, guys, what's, can I ask? Behind the emotional.

PJ Sorbo [00:28:49]:
She goes. The mom goes. We have spent just under $300,000 looking at therapies.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:28:56]:
Wow.

PJ Sorbo [00:28:56]:
And she goes. This is the first time that we, we have ever seen anything that gives hope to the fact that her brain can get better. And her results from that day forward skyrocketed. Absolutely insane. So I followed up with them all year. I went in about a month later, somebody that couldn't walk was walking on a treadmill and moving through the paces and able to form cohesive sentences. And she's now back in nursing school. It's a really cool story.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:29:33]:
My point, Getting goosebumps listening to a pj. Really powerful. Wow.

PJ Sorbo [00:29:39]:
There's two points behind that. Number one is it goes back to my point of if you can't measure, you can't personalize.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:29:47]:
Yep.

PJ Sorbo [00:29:48]:
There's a number of things. And I'm going to do one more case study that kind of highlights that. Number two, the importance of belief and the power of the brain. And that's what I truly believe allowed her to compound her improvement.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:30:03]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:30:04]:
That she believed that she could get better. And so you can see that. And most of that was high powered laser photobiomodulation, all that kind of stuff. But then everyone always wants, and you and I have talked about this before, everyone wants the sexy biohack, the one thing vice. Like what's that one thing that's going to do it for me? What's the one device? Is it the immortal bed or is it this? Like how many hundreds of thousands of dollars do I need to spend? So we work with which is one of the concierge leaders kind of for like preventative medical care. They've been around for years. Years. We did a four year case study with them and if, if you're not familiar with Synix or if you're not familiar with Dale Bredesen, if you haven't read anyone listening, if you haven't read the end of Alzheimer's, read the book.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:30:52]:
Please do. Game Changer Dale has been on twice as well. He's amazing. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:30:57]:
One of my idols. Yeah, right. It's not a hard read nor is it complicated. And the reality of the fact is that personalized lifestyle medication is the number one thing that will extend your lifespan, your health span, etc. It's a low glycemic anti inflammatory diet plan. And that's different for everyone. Right. I'm not saying Carnivore or Blue Zone or whatever.

PJ Sorbo [00:31:25]:
I'm just saying whatever works for you.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:31:28]:
And, and slap On a CGM just for people listening. Continuous glucose monitor for a month, even just two weeks, just to see how individual body responds to food, different things that you drink, sleep, exercise, stress.

PJ Sorbo [00:31:41]:
You're gonna learn.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:31:42]:
Super informative. Yeah. You will learn about yourself.

PJ Sorbo [00:31:44]:
You can start by downloading my fitness pal and starting to learn about macronutrients. Right. Like just education. Right. Number two, exercise. The most important thing in my opinion.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:31:57]:
100, right? Yeah. Number one. Yeah, yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:32:01]:
Arguably just as important as exercise, quite frankly. And it's the number one thing that I struggle with.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:32:06]:
Yeah. Getting to sleep. That's the problem. Exactly. And. And women need one hour longer than men typically as well. And plan for an extra hour in bed to get the full eight hours, ideally of sleep. But I struggle too.

PJ Sorbo [00:32:21]:
Sleep science is a whole different area that I clearly need help in. But. And then outside of that, it really is just. It's when you put those three eat, sleep and exercise together and then I truly believe hormone therapy is very important. At a certain age, there's a natural time. I would love to pretend that our testosterone levels as men or women or like if you're looking at some of the recent glycan research that Lippman and some of those other people are doing, I mean you look at the glycan, aging estrogen is ridiculously important for the inflammatory complex.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:32:59]:
Yeah. It's like a longevity hormone that people have not appreciated as much. And you see what happens when it disappears in menopause for women like their biological age goes up on average by 8% in one year if they're not taking any HRT. It's wild. So this is research by lichen age.

PJ Sorbo [00:33:17]:
Yeah, it's really, really cool. So long story short, you do all of those things together. We are seeing, or we saw on our four year study with cenegenics and one sticks out to me, but there's hundreds of patients that are like this. With a 75 year old male that I did a baseline scan on, brain voltage was like a three. And for those that aren't familiar, it's not great. In all honesty, traditionally I want to see 10, 11, 12, 18, 20. Right. The higher the better.

PJ Sorbo [00:33:49]:
And then P300 is named P300 because your brain is supposed to process that signal around 300 milliseconds. His was 403, so a third slower than it should. I mean we're talking basically early cognitive decline. Basically somewhere with that and physical manifestations as well. You know, forgetting his words. Not overly mobile signs up with cyanogenics. Does A year long of of personalized. I come in the next year and I'm redoing brain scans.

PJ Sorbo [00:34:19]:
And I not that I did all the brain scans, I did all of them, but it just so happened that it fell on the same day that I was able to do his brain scan again. This is a different human.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:34:26]:
Wow.

PJ Sorbo [00:34:27]:
Night and day.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:34:28]:
And he was 76, right?

PJ Sorbo [00:34:30]:
76, right. Cracking jokes, in shape. And I have all of his blood and biomarkers. And then I have his brain performance. He went from a 3 microvolt brain to just under 15 and his P300 speed went from 403 milliseconds to 300 milliseconds. Neuroplasticity is real at every age.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:34:53]:
I mean, that's super exciting. It just gave me another idea. And the fact at that age too. I know my father's 86, so a challenge for you, PJ. Let's see. Discuss separately. But I know obviously as aging happens, hearing loss declines. And so I wonder because of the auditory testing function of it, if the hairs in the ears are gone or depleted, does that not impact the results even if 1000%?

PJ Sorbo [00:35:24]:
Yeah. It's actually why I we're looking at some collaborations with some major hearing aid companies. I believe that not only just hearing, but I also believe olfactory. And not that I want to go down that rabbit hole of like post Covid olfactory, the whole shebang. Cognitive issues. But there is a true correlation there. But when you're not stimulating the brain and those neurological pathways, right. So hearing obviously stimulates a ton of neurological pathways.

PJ Sorbo [00:35:52]:
So as that becomes suppressed, it's very similar to a muscle when you don't use it. Right. When those neurons are not vascularized or they're not used on a regular basis, they do become a little bit more degenerative. And the thing about neurons is that they are somewhat corrosive, for lack of a better term, when they become devascularized stroma, like we can go down that rabbit hole later. But you also can revascularize neurons, which a lot of people thought you can't. Now, there's an inflammatory complex, but there's some really cool research. I don't know if you're familiar with shockwave, softwave, trt, but not an expert in it. But you can research.

PJ Sorbo [00:36:29]:
And they're starting to look at the cognitive side of things as well. But like it is a ironically, it started with a lot of chiropractors, but the results that they have with neuropathy are out of this world. Stem cell recruitment, revascularization, chronic inflammatory clearing. Like, it just. It's unreal.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:36:49]:
Wow.

PJ Sorbo [00:36:50]:
And so if you can do that with nerves, what can we do to the brain? It begs the question at least, right?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:36:57]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:36:58]:
But to your point, I think hearing is ridiculously important. It's why, like, there's a pride thing. I think, especially my father, my grandfather want hearing aids. I'm like, wait, you don't want to hear the world not understanding that there's.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:37:12]:
Research, though, it can affect up to 50% of cognitive function because of exactly what you're saying. That lack of stimulation, it's like the muscle you don't use, but what you don't use, you lose. Right. And so getting on top of hearing at any age, you know, people joke, oh, you know, I can't really hear that well. Oh, you know, spent too much time next to a boombox or in a nightclub or whatever. It needs to be addressed sooner than later. So, yeah, it's just I. I think.

PJ Sorbo [00:37:36]:
There'S a point, I hope that we have a shift here where it's like, for me, it just boils down to a quality of life. Right. Why do I wear contacts? I wear contacts because I still like to see the world. Right. If I couldn't smell, I would still enjoy smelling food. When I travel to Italy or I travel to other places, I enjoy smelling things.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:37:56]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:37:56]:
When my wife is having a conversation with me, I don't want to say, what, 47 times? And not from selective hearing. Right. Like, there's a pride point. But then there's just a point where I would ask people, like, what is the reason not to. What is the reason to not get a brain scan? What is the reason to not check your hate? What is the reason not. Not to do your blood panel on a year over year basis? Because the reality of the fact is, although that data can be scary, that data is also. It's the only thing that allows you to make a plan of attack.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:28]:
You need to have the data. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But you measure can be managed. Right. So I think it just establishing that baseline is so important and knowing that there are modalities that can improve it. So it's not just, here's your test, sorry, the results aren't great. Good luck.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:43]:
No, there are modalities you can do. Now. That said, and this is, I think, is the challenge, pj that I also see as well with, you know, clients around the world, they're like, oh, you know, I discuss it with my doctor, but they don't know what to do with this or they don't know about this research or they haven't read. And I think that's where some people face a challenge is that they get, you know, blocked completely by their medical professional because typically they have, you know, on average, what is it, six minutes per patient. Some people obviously have the luxury of having, you know, a physician that has a bit more time for them, but they're not up to speed, always on the latest research and what is possible, etc. So where can people find the practitioners or where would you send them to get these scans to know that they're speaking with practitioners that can put them on protocols for improvement?

PJ Sorbo [00:39:28]:
Two things. Number one, WABI is now partnered with a ton of longevity concierge practice. You can Google it. And there's a ton of places that we are starting to roll out more on the preventative side of things. So cenegenics, humanot restore, like all of those types of locations will have WABI systems. Number two, and I like to make this point not as a point of being on a pedestal, but it's just the reality of the fact, if you are expecting anyone else to advocate for your health other than you, you're barking.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:39:59]:
Up the wrong tree 100%.

PJ Sorbo [00:40:02]:
The reality of the fact is you are able and you should be able to ask questions. And as you come across things with your healthcare practitioner, hey, I was doing research on something called the WABI scan or this type of blood panel or this glycan research. I'm really interested in it, right? And if your doctor's not willing to have those conversations, it's probably not the right fit for you. Right? There are the landscape of longevity or just just regenerative medical practitioners continuing to come out of the fold and start to what I would say break the traditional model is happening in troves. And so there are practitioners that are willing to learn and to research and to ask questions. And I think it's finding someone that probably identifies with the same ethos that you have. But if you're expecting a different result from the same thing and you're going in and you're not getting the answers you want, nobody can change that but you.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:41:03]:
100 that's Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. So it's definitely time to change it around as well. I want to touch on a point you mentioned before about mitochondrial function. I've had guests on who are specialists, for example, on research around urolithin A mitophagy clearing out the old mitochondria, essentially like the senescent mitochondria, to clear and make space for the new ones as well. Can you explain a little bit more about that process and how WAVI can help to better understand it? Because I know we're talking about processing speed, but how does that correlate with the mitochondria?

PJ Sorbo [00:41:45]:
This is a. I don't want to go too down the rabbit hole, but I'm going to try and keep this as surface level and detailed as I can. So there's two components to a P300 wave. There's the voltage and the speed, as I've mentioned, right. Our voltage is more of a representation of that, just initial mitochondrial support. So how much? If I have a bucket, there's only so much water in that bucket that my brain can store, right? And when I start taking water out of that bucket, right, that's where cognitive resources are being donated. There's only so much water left, right. There's not more there.

PJ Sorbo [00:42:20]:
I can't create more energy. So it's that initial mitochondrial support. So in things like concussions and TBIs, in, in quick, short term changes of that mitochondrial support, we will see changes in that P300 voltage, P300 speed, or that processing speed. Traditionally, we don't see changes in it until there's been an acute or a chronic problem where you're actually impacting the neurological conductivity between neurons, right? And that can be from chronic inflammatory complex, right. What you would refer to as cellular senescence. And, and what is leading to that. You have, if you look at the anatomy of a neuron, right, you have your axon, you have your dendrite, then you have that little, those little fatty myelin sheath, that line, that terminal. What happens, or what we think happens, right.

PJ Sorbo [00:43:11]:
Is when those myelin sheath become devascularized is when we really start to have neurological conductivity problems, right? And for a long time with dementia, Alzheimer's, any sort of neurocognitive decline or neurological decline of any sort, we thought that kind of amyloid plaque was the issue, right? It was the cause, the root cause of dementia and Alzheimer's, which has since been debunked.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:43:39]:
Exactly.

PJ Sorbo [00:43:40]:
Yeah, exactly. You're up on research. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking at it and saying, oh, this is not actually what's happening, right. And in my personal thought process, right. I truly believe that it's actually a byproduct, right. And because neurons become, you know, necrotic when they become devascularized or damaged, etc. What I believe this is a belief I don't have the scientific backing is that that amyloid plaque is kind of the insulator, right? It's a acute inflammatory complex that turns chronic. And what happens is that we don't sleep overly well as a population.

PJ Sorbo [00:44:16]:
And I mean that as a global population. The only time I'm going to back up, we have this massive lymphatic system, right. We're only sick every so often. And so why is our lymphatic system so robustly built out if we're only using it very, very seldomly when we're sick? Well, your lymphatic system is responsible for a heck of a lot more than just when you're sick.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:44:41]:
Yeah, right.

PJ Sorbo [00:44:42]:
It is our, it is our body's way of clearing out the trash. And what a lot of people just don't understand is that when you are exercising, there's always a byproduct, right? There's sweat, right. When your body is using and creating energy, there is a byproduct and that's free radical damage. And that's all that mitochondria, especially up here, if you just sit here and you lay here all day, you don't do anything. Roughly 70% of your base metabolic rate is designed to keep this thing functioning. It is a ridiculously energy consuming organ. Right. It just requires a ton of metabolic support that also comes with a ton of free radicals and a ton of mitochondrial support.

PJ Sorbo [00:45:26]:
Right. And so when we look at that and we're not sleeping appropriately, there's only one time that your body is really stimulating lymphatic drainage and clearing out that garbage. And it's when you're in deep and REM sleep. And so when, when we say one of the key fundamentals of longevity is sleep, it's not just, oh, it's important. It literally is one of the net most necessary things that you can do because our body has to clear out those senescent cells. It has to be able to bring that garbage down. You have these massive lymphatic ducts right here that do cross right over here. I wonder why they're there.

PJ Sorbo [00:46:04]:
It's strange. It's like it's, you know, designed to help clear the garage.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:46:07]:
You knew what it was doing. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, essentially it's like the whole, you know, cleaning system of the brain that happens at night while you are asleep. And. Yeah. So cutting edges on sleep is affecting your brain health, your cognition, brain fog. But even things like Your hormone levels, weight loss.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:46:25]:
Oh, like I can't understand. I can't lose weight. And it's one's like, well, let's look at your stress levels and let's look at. Are you sleeping? No, I'm not really sleeping. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:46:35]:
Everything. Right. All of the chronic inflammatory complexes that we come across in everyday life. I don't care what your thoughts on, on, on emf, whether you think it's real or not, there are inflammatory things happening in the body, right, from our food, from our, our lack of exercise, from the amount of environmental and. Or other stressors and toxins. And so if you don't have a way of cleaning that garbage out, what happens is your system becomes overloaded and then we're not draining, we're not cleaning the brain out. And so I know that was really long winded, but I do think it's a very important point to cover because when we look at the brain and we're looking at those two components, although they are a very, very oversimplified version of cognitive, you know, there's so much happen, so much more that happens with cognition. Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:47:26]:
But when we just look at those two components of a P300 wave, I do think that they tell us so much. There's so much information there that we're just scratching the surface of.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:47:35]:
It's an exciting space. So, yeah, thank you for going down that rabbit hole. Do you believe it's possible for someone to have perfect cognition at 80, 90 or 100?

PJ Sorbo [00:47:45]:
I think in my core this might be a. I think that Dr. Dale Bredesen and I would probably agree on this. I think 90 to 95% of dementia, Alzheimer's and cognitive decline is fully preventable.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:47:57]:
Oh, yeah, and even promoter, Dr. David promoter as well. Yes. Yeah. Type 3 diabetes, and it's a metabolic disease. And I think that understanding helps people realize diabetes is preventable. So type 3 diabetes, that is Alzheimer's, cognitive client, et cetera, is largely preventable as well.

PJ Sorbo [00:48:16]:
I was just at IHS this last two weeks ago, whatever it was, out in New York, and I went down the road hole as you, Amy, good friend, business partner of mine. We're going through just a conversation at lunch, and I probably have an oversimplified view of disease, but I truly believe that everything is a chronic inflammatory complex. Doesn't matter what disease it is. I mean, seriously, in, in my head, right? You could have chronic, you might have fibromyalgia. It's an inflammatory complex. Right. Lupus inflammatory complex, dementia inflammatory complex. That's been stimulated by blood sugar issues that's just so happened to manifest in the brain.

PJ Sorbo [00:49:06]:
Right. If you look at corrosive issues of arthritis, it's an inflammatory complex just manifesting in the joints. Right. And so like. Yes. Is it an oversimplification? Yes. But is it really that much of an oversimplification?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:49:20]:
Probably not, no.

PJ Sorbo [00:49:23]:
So when, when acute inflammation is great. Acute inflammation is super important. If I slice my arm and there's issues, I need acute inflammatory complex to send a whole bunch of white blood cells there. I need red blood cells, I need vascularization, I need anything that's going to fight any contamination that's going to be in that area. Right. That's super important. When that inflammatory complex transitions to a chronic standpoint where the body is unable to deal with it or clear it, what happens in a wound? Gangrene, you get, you know, sepsis even.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:49:58]:
Yeah, sepsis.

PJ Sorbo [00:49:59]:
You know, all of those things. Right. I think that we've been naive in medicine to pretend that that same thing just doesn't happen internally. I think that we try to label everything as just this massive issue of all of these different pharmaceuticals needed. And I know that this is a very privileged view, by the way. I totally get that because it's, it is an oversimplification. But at the same point, the reality of the fact is that it is just a chronic inflation inflammatory complex.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:50:24]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:50:24]:
And at some point there was a root cause of whatever that inflammation was. And so if we can get to the root cause of what that inflammation was, and it could be blood sugar modulation for the brain, if you can keep your blood sugar like this, you are less likely to build inflammatory issues. And it's not just one thing. I mean like, not that I want to talk about hop, but like HOP has an ingredient in it called dihydroberberine.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:50:52]:
Yeah. Share for a moment. So HOP is Human Optimization Project, which.

PJ Sorbo [00:50:57]:
Is the amazing company Amy and I started.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:51:01]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:51:01]:
It's. It's. In my opinion, it's the most clinically backed longevity slash anti aging supplement that's ever been produced. And the reason being is because it literally financially didn't make sense to put together. It's every ingredient, every clinical dose doesn't make a whole bunch of money because it was, It's. We sell 600 plus dollars worth of supplements to people for 154 bucks and it's. Do we want it to be an accessibility thing? I was talking yesterday to a very good friend of mine and I think the point of longevity is an interesting thing. Because I think everyone has a different definition of longevity.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:51:40]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:51:41]:
Right. I still don't think that we as a population know what that term means. And I think anti aging as a whole is an oxymoron. Right. The reality of the fact is that you are going to age. It's going to happen. Right. And longevity is this intangible thing that all of us are chasing, like, oh, guys, I am the most longevity person in the world.

PJ Sorbo [00:51:59]:
What the hell does that mean?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:52:01]:
What is that?

PJ Sorbo [00:52:02]:
Like, there's just not a whole bunch there. I think the reality of the fact is that the general population is just sitting there and you can oversimplify it and you can say, well, it's super easy to exercise, it's super easy to sleep, it's super easy to eat. Right. But the reality of the fact is that I think most of the population sits there and says, I just don't want to hurt in the morning, or I just want to have the energy to play with my kids. Or I want to have the energy to even contemplate going to the gym for the first time. And I think that's where we in the longevity industry tend to forget about the core issues.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:52:42]:
Yeah. That core people where they are. Yeah, we have to.

PJ Sorbo [00:52:47]:
And that is really why we started hop is we just wanted to give people a solution that met them where they were at. That was simple, that was easy. That allowed them to just say, if I have enough energy today to maybe just go to the gym for the first time, that's a step in the.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:53:06]:
Right direction or even out for a walk. Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:53:11]:
I slept better. Like, if I can give your body the metabolic and cellular support to help combat inflammation and aging and the lack of energy production, if I can just do that, what is the actual symptomology that starts happening in your body? Or maybe you have the energy to cook dinner instead of going out for fast food. And I know it's really simple, but that's where people are at. That's the real issue that we face.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:53:42]:
Yeah. Thank you for highlighting that. I think it's so important because as you said as well, pj, like so many people in the longevity space are focused on the science or the molecule or the pathway, and the majority of the population are sitting there saying, I don't even have the bandwidth, the energy, the ability to even contemplate what you're even talking about. So it's how do you help more people? Like, how do you reach the masses? And it's just giving people that energy back that will. To Live will to make a change, will to change that neural pathway that is so ingrained on doing those unhealthy habits and step into it. And one definition of longevity that I love to use is it's not about living to 100, 100, 20, 200, whatever, these numbers that are thrown around in our space. But actually it's about stepping into the highest version of yourself, energy, purpose, vitality, and living like that for as long as possible. That could be for two years, it could be for 100 years, it doesn't matter.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:54:47]:
But if you are living a rock star life that you love, thriving and doing things that you love, ideally for the greater good and not just for oneself, you're going to live an amazing life for however long that is.

PJ Sorbo [00:54:59]:
I like.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:54:59]:
That's a definition that I. I prefer to use. Yeah, I love that.

PJ Sorbo [00:55:03]:
And I do think that that's important. And it is. It's the small things. Right. It isn't the data. And I know I talked about data fatigue, but like, it, yes. The data is super important, but really the tangible things is I just want to be on this earth as long as I can for as much as I can with my daughter.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:55:19]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:55:20]:
Now, what does that mean? There's a lot of things that go into that, but I think that's where it's just. We tend to get wrapped up. And I'm going to close the loop on that conversation. When you talk about chronic inflammatory complex, there are simple things that you can do in life to combat that. Right. Going on a walk is one of the things that can be unbelievable. Taking a supplement like dihydroberberine or something that is in like, hop has been shown to outperform metformin substantially, which is a pharmaceutical, by the way.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:55:52]:
Yeah. And dihydroberberine is not. It's a supplement. And I want to dive into that in a second. But I'll let you finish your, your thought and then we'll talk about dihydroberine.

PJ Sorbo [00:55:59]:
It's just. There's just really easy. There's really easy solutions. Yeah, it was my point behind that is that I think people look for one pill. And the reason that we formulated HOP the way that we did, like, here's the analogy, and it's a terrible analogy, quite frankly, but it's the best one I found. So if you have a better solution, like, please let me know. I never think, like someone asking, like, oh, what's the best diet for longevity? Right. And like me putting a strawberry in front of them, like, here's what you need.

PJ Sorbo [00:56:26]:
Strawberry. I think that's where a lot of supplements are at right now. I think it's where a lot of longevity protocols are. Because everyone is just selling this one thing, right? And I think the thing that we tend to forget, like, oh, here's nr, it is going to boost all of your mitochondrial support. Well, the problem with that is that if you're not clearing any of the lymphatic, like the senescent cells, like there's only so effective that that's going to be.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:56:48]:
Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:56:49]:
If you don't have the methylation donors that you need for like the methyl groups, you're not going to produce that mitochondrial support regard. No matter how much nad you put pump into your system, it's not going to happen. Right. And so the reason we formulated HOP the way that we did is because it combats all 13 downfalls of aging. Every singular cellular process is focused on. So it's not just blood sugar regulation, it's also the mitochondrial support. It's also the calcium channels that are allowing calcium to be sucked into the bones that actually allows red blood cells to be produced. Right.

PJ Sorbo [00:57:20]:
Like we went through very methodically to think about all of these cellular processes to truly combat aging at a cellular.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:57:28]:
Level, which is amazing. Can you just walk through what is actually in there for someone listening?

PJ Sorbo [00:57:34]:
Yeah, great question. 19 different ingredients. So your, your key highlights are spermidine. It's nr, right. Clinical dose of both. You have astaxanthin, which is one of the best and or most potent kind of antioxidants in the world, both topically and ingested. You have dihydroberarine. You have a pre postbiotic, which is tributrin.

PJ Sorbo [00:57:58]:
You have full vitamin D3K2MK7 to make sure that it's the most bioavailable version of it. You have a full methyl group in there. So you have all of your essential Bs, which are very, very important. One of the things that people don't know is that your B vitamins specifically, you don't actually produce those naturally. The only way that they get into your body is through food or supplementation.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:58:22]:
Yeah. And I have to extra supplement on it as well. Like I really have struggle ingesting enough.

PJ Sorbo [00:58:27]:
And so like what, what the biggest issue when we were formulating a HOP was just how do we put all of this in one for a reasonable price point? Wasn't, you know, it was just basically we're going to take a loss until we get to an economy of scale, Right? Yeah. Whoops. But B, it was just, it was really finding the most efficacious versions of the. And so there's a number of different things and we've tried to build out as much education as we can, but that's one of the things that we're continuing to learn is how do we meet people where they're at with the messaging? Because it is a complicated message. It's, hey, here's your all in one longevity support. Right. Doesn't really mean anything to people. So over the last, you know, couple of weeks, I've been really diving into like Gemini and Chat and really trying to simplify this messaging, really figure out what the core foundation of, of a lot of these products are.

PJ Sorbo [00:59:13]:
But I think the thing about HOP is that we tried to make it fun. It's fun branding. It's fun. I love little pieces.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:59:20]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [00:59:20]:
Not that I want to sit here and sell hop. That's not what it's about, but it is.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:59:25]:
Interested? We'll put a discount code so you can check it out in the show notes. In the moment, it's just available in the US you are expanding into the uk, I believe.

PJ Sorbo [00:59:33]:
We are working on it. Yeah. But right now, just the us.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:59:35]:
Just the US for the moment as well. I want to touch on dihydroberine. We've had Sean Wells, our mutual friend, on the podcast a couple times now and I think it's one of the most exciting compounds that are out there. I mean, there are many, but I was fascinated when I discovered it. Can you share for my audience why dihydrobirirubirine is so powerful, particularly around the metabolic disease pandemic that we're seeing?

PJ Sorbo [01:00:00]:
Yeah, for sure. So a, we are in a pandemic of metabolic issue. Right. Like, let's just, let's cut right to the chase. The U.S. i think obesity rates are above 72% as a whole. Like, and I'm talking morbidly obese. Right, like above 32%.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:00:15]:
BMI talking. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [01:00:17]:
We have a problem. I think childhood obesity is now above 50%, which just irks me. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:00:23]:
50% of 15 year olds are either obese or overweight. Yeah. Compared to 3% in Japan. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [01:00:30]:
And so those are causing cascading metabolic issues for the rest of their life. And not that we need to go into what adipose tissue does for endocrine levels or hormone levels or any of that kind of stuff, but there is a massive onslaught of problems with that. Right. Look at our. I mean, if you look at male testosterone levels as A whole. They've declined year over year, over year over year. And you wonder why we're having fertility issues. Like what we're having.

PJ Sorbo [01:00:56]:
It's not just the hormones, hormones, but like pcos, everything, like it just. There is a massive onslaught that happens with metabolic disease. And metabolic disease, if I go back to my previous point, is a chronic inflammatory complex. Right. Like you literally are creating chronic inflammation in the body non stop. Right. From, from improper metabolic health.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:01:16]:
It's like the inside of you is burning. It's like a house is burning on the inside. Yeah. So people literally visual. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [01:01:22]:
So Burberry berberine is a natural compound, but there's a couple of problems with berberine at its core. Number one is it's somewhat inflammatory is the wrong word, but it's not overly great for the gut. It can be really rough on the gut, right. In its natural form. So that's actually the first thing that dihydroberberine does, is that it actually is way, way, way less disrupting to the gut compared to over the natural version of berberine. Number two, dihydroberberine. What it does is it helps keep your metabolic or your blood sugar levels like this. There are studies that have been done where you take dihydroberberine and it works better with other ingredients, by the way.

PJ Sorbo [01:02:10]:
It's not just this single individual thing, right. When you have other ingredients that support it, like tributrin and a pre probiotic like, it does help with the efficiency of dihydro. You could eat a piece of carrot cake just for an example. Right. And without something like dihydroberberine in your gut, your blood sugar is going to do this. It will spike through the roof and it will probably stay elevated for a extended period of time. When you ingest dihydroberine and you eat that same piece of carrot cake, depending on your metabolic pathways, your metabolic flexibility, this is a very personalized thing. Again, to your point, why you should, everyone I think should have a CGM at some point to understand these things.

PJ Sorbo [01:02:50]:
But you have that dihydroberine in your system, you eat that carrot cake, what happens is you're still going to see a blood sugar spike, right? Hypothetically, we'll see a lower spike. And what we'll actually see is we'll see that blood sugar come back substantially quicker to a baseline level. Yeah, super, super important, super important. And so that's why for hop, we do a twice daily dose. It's not just one pill of dihydroberberine because There is a half life, right. So it's one in the morning, one in the afternoon and it's trying to keep that in your circulation for as long as you can. People complain about that 2pm crash and that's normally a blood sugar problem or a mitochondrial support problem. Right.

PJ Sorbo [01:03:33]:
And it's because you have this big lunch and you, you spike your blood sugar and then it comes crashing down. You're like, oh my God. Well, if you don't have that massive spike where it's causing glycolysis, right, and you're getting all the glycogen sucked out of your body, going to the muscles, etc, different places, that energy stays sustained throughout the day. Or it's supposed to.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:03:52]:
Yeah. Thank you for the explanation, pj. I'm just aware of time and so I want to touch on a couple of points before we finish up today for people wanting to really focus on their brain health. What would be your optimal protocol? Or maybe you can share what you do on a daily or weekly basis to keep your brain functioning in a peak performance state.

PJ Sorbo [01:04:16]:
So I'm not perfect and you well know that. I do. No one is number one A educate yourself. It's the most important thing that you can do. And I'm genuinely saying it's not a sales plug, but if you are interested in cognitive decline or neurological issues as a whole, read the End of Alzheimer's. It's like a hundred and something pages. I think it's what, 130 pages like.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:04:41]:
It'S not very easy read. So just for people wondering and we'll link it in the show notes. The End of Alzheimer's program how to reverse Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's at any Age by Dr. Dale Bredesen. But we'll link it in the show notes and also he's one of my first podcast interviews.

PJ Sorbo [01:04:56]:
So simple. It really is, right. You want to eat. Right? And that. And I'm not saying I'm trying to be realistic about it. It doesn't have to be 100% organic, it doesn't have to be paleo, it doesn't have to be just grass fed everything. The more that you can get into grass fed, pasture raised, high quality nutrients, organic, better than your body is going to do. Right.

PJ Sorbo [01:05:20]:
But start small. And I understand that people also have different budgets. Right. So start where you can start. The higher quality input that you're going to put into your body, the higher quality output, you're going to have no questions asked. Right?

Claudia von Boeselager [01:05:34]:
Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [01:05:34]:
That starts with getting processed food out of your diet.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:05:37]:
Just on sugar.

PJ Sorbo [01:05:39]:
Yep. I have a unique. We'll talk about sugar at a different time because I have a unique spin on sugar.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:05:46]:
Oh, okay. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's.

PJ Sorbo [01:05:49]:
Been villainized a little bit.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:05:50]:
100%, I think within doses. And we know fructose elevates uric acid levels as well. So fructose is also especially liquid fructose. But yeah, I have friends that with that produce organic stevia. That's cold pressed Nomosu. I'll put a plug in here is an amazing organic stevia chocolate brand. It's genuinely delicious as well. Nomosu, highly recommended.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:06:12]:
So definitely one to try as well.

PJ Sorbo [01:06:15]:
So eat high quality input. Right. Try and get processed foods out of your diet. Right. Seed oils, all that kind of stuff. They are inflammatory, no questions asked. Be exercise, just any form of exercise is so ridiculously important. I'm talking walking move, right?

Claudia von Boeselager [01:06:38]:
And several times a day. By the way, I think some people are like, oh, I did my 10 minute walk this morning and I'm sitting the rest of the day. Think of your body made to move.

PJ Sorbo [01:06:46]:
After your meals, walk in the morning, walk at breakfast. Like if you could do a 10 minute walk four times a day, you will be in a better spot. People always look at the UK or Europe or Italy and these blue zones. The reality of the fact is that people are walking to coffee, they're walking to meals, they're walking all over the place and it's not heavy, heavy exercise. I do believe that weight bearing exercise, especially for women is one of the most important things that you can do for metabolic health and oh, osteoporosis or bone density, you need it. But outside of that move, last but not least, sleep. And I know none of them are sexy, none of them are this magical miracle thing. I do really believe if I'm going to add a fourth layer onto that, I cannot stress enough your hormone health.

PJ Sorbo [01:07:31]:
And I'd actually probably start there in all honesty for everybody because the reality of the fact is sometimes, like we talked about, we have to meet people where they're at. And when your hormones are ridiculously disrupted because of everything that happens in life, it's hard to say I have energy to eat right or it's hard to sleep correctly or it's hard to do something. And so I think sometimes we have to put the cart before the horse. Sometimes we need to go get our blood panel done. I made a lot of poor choices as trying to be a bodybuilder and I will be on TRT the rest of My life. Right. I don't feel great not being on testosterone. Right.

PJ Sorbo [01:08:09]:
It makes it much more difficult to go to the gym. And so like go get your blood panel done. Educate yourself. Women in particular, estrogen, testosterone, men also estrogen and testosterone. It's not just about your testosterone levels. You need estrogen. It's very important for a whole bunch of processes.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:08:29]:
100 and Dr. Amy Killen is a great one to follow on Instagram. We were talking about it before. A mutual friend on explaining this too. There's so many myths around hormones. Hormone replacement therapy. It is super, super essential. So women are like testosterone.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:08:44]:
That's just for men. It's like try, you'll see the difference. Yeah, yeah. So I definitely agree with you that looking at hormones is so important as well. And many people just think it's something for post 50 year olds. Your life will change if you have hormone dysfunction to sort it out sooner than later. And as you were saying as well, with all the microplastics, all these endocrine disruptors that we're lathering on ourselves for years that are in our systems, it is impacting our hormones, our hormonal levels, our ability to think straight, to function, for bodily functions to even work properly. And that's I think the important thing for people to understand.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:09:24]:
The body wants you to be. Well, it wants to heal. But if it's full of toxins, et cetera, we're talking about lymphatic drainways, et cetera. Like if everything is clogged, how can it. So how do you free yourself from it so that the process is that this beautiful body. Right. Can start functioning properly again? So love, love, love all of this pj. And I'm so glad that you have so many different solutions across the space.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:09:49]:
Space and expanding along the way. Do you have time for someone say that again?

PJ Sorbo [01:09:55]:
We're just having fun. It's all we can do.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:09:58]:
Just having fun. Exactly. Do you have some time for some longevity rapid fire questions?

PJ Sorbo [01:10:02]:
Yes, of course.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:10:03]:
Okay, two minutes. What's a surprising biohacker longevity tool that has the biggest impact on your health?

PJ Sorbo [01:10:09]:
Great question. Now you're gonna laugh at this. It's not a shameless sales plug. It's actually one of our mutual friends, Amitai with Young goose.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:10:17]:
Yep.

PJ Sorbo [01:10:19]:
The topical delivery of certain compounds have been fascinating for me in my life. Absolutely fascinating. It's really intriguing. And they're doing a really great job with clean skin care. And I do think that it has made a substantial difference in my life not from just like a An appearance perspective, but truly like just a vitality perspective. That has been something that I never believed in skin care in my entire life. It doesn't work. It's stupid.

PJ Sorbo [01:10:49]:
It's whatever. Right? Then your best friend starts a company and you're like, well, he's probably, you know, support it. And then it makes a difference. It's been, it's been, it's been surprising.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:10:58]:
Okay. Yeah. I was just speaking with Anastasia, the co founder and wife of Amita. Yes. Last week. So yeah, they're great. Yungoos. Highly recommended for people looking at skin longevity and keeping beautiful skin for longer.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:11:10]:
So amazing. What's one health experiment or biohack that failed completely but taught you something incredibly valuable?

PJ Sorbo [01:11:18]:
For me, stem cells, personally. So when I was on my brain journey to heal my brain, I found myself laying upside down on a pregnancy table shoving stem cells up my nose as far as I could.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:11:37]:
Self induced or did someone do this for you?

PJ Sorbo [01:11:40]:
Someone did it for me.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:11:41]:
Okay.

PJ Sorbo [01:11:42]:
This is where it's very important to understand just what is happening in the body and what's actually possible. Here's the reality of it. Stem cells are too big to cross the blood brain barrier. People just, they're not gonna cross. So just shoving stem cells up your nose is not really going to do anything. For the record, there was no other than feeling like, not great for the rest of the day. Not a whole bunch of improvement exosomes, on the other hand. But it was.

PJ Sorbo [01:12:12]:
The learning lesson is it is like there's a whole bunch of experts in this world, right? And all of these people that are like, I will solve all of your issues, right? Do some research first. Like just do a little background. ChatGPT is an amazing thing. Do stem cells cross blood brain barrier? What you. The first answer that's going to come up is no, no.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:12:32]:
Save yourself pain and hanging over a.

PJ Sorbo [01:12:34]:
Table a little bit of cash because it's also not overly affordable. So let's just, you know, just learn from my mistake. Do a little research before you're just.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:12:42]:
Like, yeah, pj, you've been involved in science and entrepreneurship. What's the best system, habit or productivity hack that's helped you juggle these roles so seamlessly?

PJ Sorbo [01:12:53]:
I love that so much. You're gonna know this answer for me. Her name is Casey. You know, here's the thing. As someone that's become that is neurodivergent. Right? Like, not that we dove into this very much, but I don't necessarily believe in the term ADD and adhd. I believe in the term free thinking versus focused. I also believe in passion driven work that I am able to hyper fixate on.

PJ Sorbo [01:13:22]:
The reality of the fact is that I think people don't like to be uncomfortable. And I think that's just innately true of us as a species. We don't like discomfort. And the reality of the fact is that looking yourself in the mirror sometimes can be extremely uncomfortable. Yeah, I was blessed to have, or I am blessed to have an amazing assistant who helps run my life. And I don't think that I could survive without her nowadays. But that's a very luxurious answer. But the reality of the fact is that, like, sometimes it requires you to look yourself in the mirror and say, where am I falling short and how can I solve this problem? I think a lot of people look for a hack, but the reality of the fact is that you need to have the conversation with yourself first on where are you falling short? Is it due to a lack of systems? Is it due from a lack of adherence to those systems? Is it due to what it.

PJ Sorbo [01:14:18]:
What is the thing that is preventing you from being the version of yourself that you would like to become? It's a hard conversation to have. Right. It's hard to look in the mirror. It's not easy, but it's extremely necessary because the only one stopping you is you. And I truly mean that. Like, and I know it's. I know every entrepreneur, everyone says it, but it really is true. If you want to get 1% better today, it means you have to look in the mirror and say, what is the thing that's not allowing me to be 1% better? Right.

PJ Sorbo [01:14:47]:
Everyone has a different system I like to use. Well, let me rephrase this. I love having an organizational system like Monday or Trello or whatever else it is, but I'm not good at using them. Right. So that's why Casey exists in this world for me. Like, and she's great at holding me accountable for those things. But, like, you can start with a damn planner.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:15:07]:
Yeah. Piece of paper, a post clip. Yeah.

PJ Sorbo [01:15:11]:
Multiple posters, and then say, is this working? So, like, for me, that has been. The hack is having a hard conversation. What am I not good at?

Claudia von Boeselager [01:15:23]:
Yeah, I love that. And, and understanding your zone of genius and seeing all the other areas that might not be in your zone of genius. What's a book, podcast or resource on brain health and longevity you'd gift to everyone listening to this show?

PJ Sorbo [01:15:36]:
Number one, as we've mentioned, I think obviously we're going to link the end of Alzheimer's in the notes, I'm going to give you a different answer, actually, real quick. The thing that I want people to think about is that your whole body health is directly correlated to your brain health. And I think we tend to separate those two things. I think we think that our brain is this own individual entity and what we forget about is that it's a whole body system. Right. What you're doing to your cardiovascular health directly impacts your brain, your liver, your everything, your micro. Micronutrient processing. And so the answer, which is an indirect answer, is start to learn about the health of your entire body and you will improve your brain, no questions asked.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:16:25]:
What has been your most exciting purchase in the last six months of something that say, 100 or $200 or less? And we love specifics brand model where.

PJ Sorbo [01:16:36]:
People can find it specifically for longevity.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:16:41]:
In general, it can be anything. Pj Most exciting. That made you jump and get super excited.

PJ Sorbo [01:16:50]:
I am a consumer at heart. Ooh, here's my most exciting purchase. I bought a little Lego set. And there's a point behind a good friend of mine yesterday. I think that we have gotten to a place in society where we're scared.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:17:06]:
To be kids again, to play more. Yep.

PJ Sorbo [01:17:11]:
The reality of the fact is that when you're a child, the thing that drives your creativity, your fun, your inspiration is just what you want to do. The things that bring you life, vitality, et cetera, that is a reason for living. And so I went out and I bought myself a Lego set and I gift. To be honest, I was the kid literally sitting there waiting for it to come in the mailbox so that I could look at it, open it up. I was like, that is fun. I think, I think more people need that.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:17:40]:
More people need play in their lives for sure. I think it is so important to find and make time and just play and have more fun. 100%. I think it's really, really important. And for listeners, listeners wanting to know more about Wavi Medical, what you're up to, where would you send them? To websites. And we'll link everything obviously in the show notes.

PJ Sorbo [01:18:00]:
Yeah. Wabiemedical.com hotbox life my Instagram bio has everything. So at pjsorbo, I'm just reactivating my LinkedIn, so I should probably get that reactive. So, yeah, you know, all of those.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:18:16]:
We'll, we'll link it as well. Beautiful. Amazing. Pj, before we close, you have a final ask or takeaway or any parting thoughts or message from my audience today.

PJ Sorbo [01:18:25]:
Be your own best health advocate. If you don't want it, nobody's going to want it more for you. So you have the ability to self educate. You have the ability to ask for services that you are not getting. You have the ability to ask questions and don't be scared to ask questions. I think it's one of the most important things that we can do as life is continue to ask questions, question things, etc. And it starts with you taking control.

Claudia von Boeselager [01:18:52]:
Of your own health and being curious. I love it. Thank you so much PJ for coming on today, sharing your wealth of knowledge. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you so much to your audience for tuning in. And until next time.